Conditions

Man With 100-Pound Scrotum Needs Money for Surgery

Three years ago, Wesley Warren Jr. had a normal size a scrotum, but today he suffers from scrotal elephantiasis, which has given him a 100-pound scrotum. The Las Vegas man is going public with his illness in hopes of raising money to undergo a risky surgery that might be his only hope of living a normal life.

At close to 6 feet tall, he was more than 300 pounds before the scrotal elephantiasis. With the 100 pounds from that condition added on, he is now about 450 pounds.

Warren carries a milk crate wherever he goes to support his swollen scrotum. He can only move his bowels from a standing position and cannot control the flow of his urine.

Because of his physical problems, Warren hasn't been able to hold down a job since 2009. He battles depression daily, but, oddly, doctors cannot find a trace of the infection that's usually the cause of scrotal elephantiasis.

The only option covered by Warren's Medicaid is a procedure that would likely result in castration, but he still holds out hope: "I really would like to have a relationship with a woman. I should be in the prime of my life right now."

Warren attributes his condition to accidentally striking his testicles by his own leg as he twisted and turned upon awakening from sleep in late 2008.

"I never felt such pain," he said. "It was like a shooting pain through my entire body. When it stopped, it was like a huge tractor trailer went off the top of me. I think it ruined my lymph nodes down there."

The pain quickly went away, but next morning when he awoke, his scrotum was "the size of a soccer ball."

Warren said he immediately went to University Medical Center in Las Vegas for help. He was given a two-week dose of antibiotics for what was thought to be an infection. Warren said he went to doctors for months, including a lymphedema specialist, without finding help: "I kind of gave up."

But the swelling became so large that he could no longer work and Warren went on disability. In early 2010, he again entered University Medical Center, hoping that doctors could find a way to help him.

Kim Voss, an associate administrator at University Medical Center, said that during an eight-week period, a team of doctors, including urologists, surgeons, internists and infectious disease specialists wrote up 20 different documentations of what they found.

Though the infectious disease generally tied to the scrotal elephantiasis was not found, Voss said antibiotics and anti-viral medications were given to Warren in hopes that they would take down the massive swelling. But since that hasn't worked, the only option they offered him, under Medicaid, was a procedure that could end in castration.

Doctors at UCLA in California are willing to try an experimental procedure to remove the tissue while preserving Warren's testes, but it will cost almost a million dollars. Warren recently went on the Howard Stern Show, hoping to raise the money for the operation.

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